This was Sunday and Mrs. Joyce always came over for breakfast; for she lived alone and never had any too much to eat, Nan was sure. As for the old woman's eating with the family, that was a fiction she kept up for appearance's sake, perhaps, or to salve her own claims to former gentility. She always set a place for herself at the family table in the dining room and then was too busy to eat with them, taking her own meal in the kitchen.
Therefore it was she only who heard the commanding rap at the kitchen door in the midst of the leisurely meal, and answered it.
Just then Nan had dropped her knife and fork and was staring from Momsey's pitying face to Papa Sherwood's grave one, as she cried, in a whisper:
“Not me? Oh, my dears! You're never going without me, all that long journey? What, whatever shall I do without you both?”
“Don't, honey! Don't say it that way!” begged Momsey, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.
“If it was not quite impossible, do you think for a moment, daughter, that we would contemplate leaving you at home?” queried Mr. Sherwood, his own voice trembling.
“It, it seems impossible!” gasped Nan, “just as though it couldn't be. I won't know what to do without you, my dears. And what will you do without me?”
That seemed to be unanswerable, and it quite broke Momsey down. She sobbed openly into her handkerchief.
“Who's going to be her little maid?” demanded Nan, of her father. “Who's going to 'do' her beautiful hair? Who's going to wait on her when she has her dreadful headaches? And who's going to play 'massagist' like me? I want to know who can do all those things for Momsey if you take her away from me, Papa Sherwood?” and she ended quite stormily.
“My dear child!” Mr. Sherwood said urgently. “I want you to listen to me. Our situation is such that we cannot possibly take you with us. That is final. It is useless for us to discuss the point, for there is nothing to be gained by discussing it from now till Doomsday.”